Avengers, Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Season 1, Episodes 1-2: Breakout
Ah, Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes. I've never actually watched any Marvel TV show other than the 90's X-Men at all, and, honestly, other than playing through the Ultimate Alliance games and basically the live-action movies, my knowledge about the Marvel Comics universe outside of the X-Men is pretty lacking. Someone a while back suggested that I watch some of the TV shows, so I decided to start off with 2010's Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, which runs for two seasons, building up the hype generated for the Marvel universe thanks to the 2010 Avengers movie.
For my reviews of Avengers EMH, I'm not going to do my usual "Easter Eggs Corner" detailing the comic book origin stories and such because, as mentioned, I'm not that familiar with the Marvel comics universe and part of watching this cartoon series is to familiarize myself with these characters instead of just reading a synopsis on Wikipedia. I'm also not doing a character roll call because as this episode shows... there's a lot of characters in Marvel that I'm just flat-out not familiar with. That said, let's get to the review!
The series opens with a two-parter episode that honestly already assumes that you're somewhat familiar with some of these characters. It's actually pretty glorious and refreshing how it's not a string of origin stories -- although as I understand it, "Breakout" takes place chronologically after episodes 3 through 7, which are all like origin-story style prequels to the opening two parter. Which is fine by me, because honestly, this two-parter is what really sold me on the series in the first place.
The episode quickly sets up that this is a Marvel universe with a fair amount of moving pieces, with Iron Man stopping an arms trade between AIM and Lucia von Bardas -- I know some Marvel characters, just not quite enough -- while we go back and forth between various metahuman supervillain prisons. Interred in two of these prisons are Bruce Banner (unsurprising, considering his alter-ego, the Hulk, is an uncontrollable monster) and Hawkeye (far more surprising). There are four of these prisons. The Vault, the Cube, the Raft and the Big House, and we get lots and lots of cameos from many colourful villains which I assume will be making appearances later on in the series. The Cube is perhaps the more interesting one compared to the other prisons, because it houses specifically villains related to Hulk's gamma radiation. Banner converses with Dr. Leonard Samson about the dangers of allowing SHIELD access to so many metahumans, noting that SHIELD is planning to weaponize them.
Meanwhile, we get a check-in with Thor, the god of thunder, and his insanely wide shoulders. While he is watching over Jane Foster (here a paramedic), he is visited by fellow Asgardian god Baldur, who notes how Odin is entering the Odinsleep. It's just world-building at this point, but it's nice to know that we're going to be visiting Asgard, presumably threatened because Odin's napping, sometime in this series. I don't think Thor makes that huge of an argument on why he makes more of a difference in Midgard compared to Asgard, though.
For my reviews of Avengers EMH, I'm not going to do my usual "Easter Eggs Corner" detailing the comic book origin stories and such because, as mentioned, I'm not that familiar with the Marvel comics universe and part of watching this cartoon series is to familiarize myself with these characters instead of just reading a synopsis on Wikipedia. I'm also not doing a character roll call because as this episode shows... there's a lot of characters in Marvel that I'm just flat-out not familiar with. That said, let's get to the review!
The series opens with a two-parter episode that honestly already assumes that you're somewhat familiar with some of these characters. It's actually pretty glorious and refreshing how it's not a string of origin stories -- although as I understand it, "Breakout" takes place chronologically after episodes 3 through 7, which are all like origin-story style prequels to the opening two parter. Which is fine by me, because honestly, this two-parter is what really sold me on the series in the first place.
The episode quickly sets up that this is a Marvel universe with a fair amount of moving pieces, with Iron Man stopping an arms trade between AIM and Lucia von Bardas -- I know some Marvel characters, just not quite enough -- while we go back and forth between various metahuman supervillain prisons. Interred in two of these prisons are Bruce Banner (unsurprising, considering his alter-ego, the Hulk, is an uncontrollable monster) and Hawkeye (far more surprising). There are four of these prisons. The Vault, the Cube, the Raft and the Big House, and we get lots and lots of cameos from many colourful villains which I assume will be making appearances later on in the series. The Cube is perhaps the more interesting one compared to the other prisons, because it houses specifically villains related to Hulk's gamma radiation. Banner converses with Dr. Leonard Samson about the dangers of allowing SHIELD access to so many metahumans, noting that SHIELD is planning to weaponize them.
Meanwhile, we get a check-in with Thor, the god of thunder, and his insanely wide shoulders. While he is watching over Jane Foster (here a paramedic), he is visited by fellow Asgardian god Baldur, who notes how Odin is entering the Odinsleep. It's just world-building at this point, but it's nice to know that we're going to be visiting Asgard, presumably threatened because Odin's napping, sometime in this series. I don't think Thor makes that huge of an argument on why he makes more of a difference in Midgard compared to Asgard, though. The other two members of the Avengers featured in this two-parter are Ant-Man and Wasp. Ant-Man is apparently behind the construction of one of the prisons, the Big House -- a shrunken-down prison where metahumans are kept in, and maintained by docile Ultron drones. Ant-Man and Wasp aren't associated with SHIELD, though, with Wasp outright declining Maria Hill's invitation to join the organization. Ant-Man's attempts to talk to one of the prisoners, someone called Mad Thinker (who I'm not very familiar with), who talks ominously about a breakout. Oh, and Black Widow's there for like a single scene, walking down the corridor.
And, of course, predictably, breakouts happen on all four prisons. The Big House expands and quite literally rips through the Helicarrier it's stationed in, and we get a glorious, dizzying series of superhero-on-supervillain action as we cut back and forth between the four facilities. There's a dude that turns people into stone! A bunch of crazy gorillas! A baboon in a suit! There's some green armoured dude that spins around! There's some crazy lion-faced winged monster! Some lady that turns into mist! A lightning humanoid! And that's not mentioning the characters I do recognize. Oh shit, Killgrave! Baron Zemo! Arnim Zola!
And the episode works wonders even if I don't exactly recognize everyone. It's clearly the work of a coordinated effort by the supervillains, and while SHIELD agents and Ultron units are getting killed left and right, the heroes go do their work. Iron Man and a very silent Hawkeye battle against a bunch of villains in the Vault, including a female Whiplash and the Crimson Dynamo. And honestly, while I don't recognize the other villains they are fighting (some dude that shoots lasers, an ice-gun dude with a parka and a Deadshot-esque dude with an acid gun), they are visually memorable enough that I'm sure I'll remember them when they do appear and get properly introduced later on.In the Cube, Dr. Samson seems to be affected by the Gamma radiation, setting him up to become a recurring supportive character later... but the episode gently puts him aside because it still has to focus on the main Avengers, with the Hulk finally being unleashed (through an honestly underwhelming sequence) upon the villains there, apparently being led by "the Leader", whose main stooges are the Abomination and the Absorbing Man. In the Helicarrier, Ant-Man, Wasp, Nick Fury and Maria Hill are fighting against a bunch of assorted villains that just seem to be weird monsters, including the aforementioned lion-faced winged human, a bunch of crazy gorillas, a snake-dude that can wrap his body.
But ultimately, the heroes end up barely surviving. Hawkeye exits stage left, Iron Man blows up the Vault, the dudes in the Helicarrier manage to escape, Hulk abandons the Cube in order to save Dr. Samson, and Thor... Thor's just arrived, basically. But the 'main' villain of this opening two-parter is the gravity-manipulating Graviton, imprisoned in the Raft, the fourth metahuman prison, who gets unleashed and screams bloody murder with a vendetta for Nick Fury at the end of the first part. Regardless, the first part is a very exciting bit that shows off, in pretty basic terms, the personalities and superpowers of each of the main Avengers (Iron Man, Ant-Man, Wasp, Hulk) while also setting up side stories with the likes of Baldur, Hawkeye, Pepper Potts and Dr. Samson and really selling home the fact that this is a pretty huge universe with many pre-established superheroes and supervillains.The second part is slightly weaker than the first, although part of it is because Graviton/Franklin Hall isn't as interesting a villain that takes up an entire episode, but considering it's a 'debut' episode that wants to show how these characters interact with each other, I suppose it's inevitable that the villain isn't super-deep. We do get an origin story for Graviton via flashbacks, though, where Franklin Hall used to be a SHIELD scientist trying to replicate Captain America's super-soldier serum, but end up going too far in his research and causing an explosion that turned him into a superpowered metahuman. Graviton, of course, blames Nick Fury for the accident, and is basically grew insane. Graviton is freed by Baron Zemo (who otherwise doesn't do much here, but like the Leader and Mad Thinker, the two-parter seems to be setting up a lot of villains for the future) and goes mad with power.
After a bit where he displays his superpowers by crushing Nick Fury (or an LMD of Fury, anyway) and raises a city from the ground, Graviton is basically attacked by the new pre-formative Avengers. It's... it's all right, I suppose, although it does run too long as basically the entire episode is them trying to figure out how to fight Graviton. Again, it's just to show how these superheroes fight as a team, showing off their superpowers and eventually defeating Graviton. SHIELD in this universe is a pretty gray and morally ambiguous organization, so the five superheroes decide to form their own team, the Avengers, as they go out to hunt down the supervillains unleashed by the Breakout.As far as a debut episode goes, "Breakout" is actually a pretty fun two-parter. Sure, the Graviton fight ends up feeling somewhat repetitive near the end, but we do kind of need the focus that it delivers. The biggest takeaway from the opening episodes really is that how Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes is set in a pre-established universe and it's not going to bother with a lot of origin story exploration, which is great. Overall, a pretty entertaining set of episodes.
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